thinking ethically - TAINTED BY ASSOCIATION

   The World Wildlife Federation periodically issues a report called Deeper Luxury. The purpose of the report is to reveal what they call an ESG performance ( i.e., environmental, social and governance is what is reviewed). The Deeper Luxury report focuses on the fashion industry.   It is not surprising that such an organization might spend some real effort in this area when reminded of such media scandals in the relatively recent past as the wide variety of sweatshops, child labor issues, blood diamonds, garments made from endangered species, and so forth.
   The report maps out many reasons, and many excuses. Among the various rationale includes such considerations as they need to compete (particularly the smaller or startup designers versus the larger or more established houses) and to the notion that under certain circumstances consumers tend to look the other way. Consider the pressure from the latter arena, when counterfeiting is now widely estimated to account for as much as 10% of the world's consumables coupled with more than 30% of consumers willing to buy knock off items.
   Fortunately, the WWF understands the business of business and offers up two approaches to address the issue. One approach is to extend the cachet that luxury tends to be all about being the best. It posits, for example, structures like a certification acknowledging safe and ethical practice, say for gold mining, and marketed as such. This would be analogous to the consumer paying a little more in the organic food movement within the agricultural industry. If that doesn’t work they can always call out the celebrities associated with hawking the stuff.

World Wildlife Fund for Nature. (2007). Deeper Luxury. Retrieved August 31, 2010, from http://www.wwf.org.uk/deeperluxury/_downloads/DeeperluxuryReport.pdf

Questions

   1. Imagine that you work in the fashion industry. How would you react to a designer’s new line when you find part of what you’ll be marketing has “questionable origins”? How, if at all, would your response change if you worked for a manufacturer?
   2. What ethical criteria should you apply to making selection decisions involving people who include in their databases sourcing contacts with which you and/or your organization have ethical issue?
   3. How important is it to you to work only for organizations with high ethical standards? Why does it (or does it not) matter to you?